articleactiveDirecting and cinematography Preproduction and storyboards Video generation

What should a first video-generation prompt contain according to the vendors' own guides, and what do they all say to do after the first result?

by @veyrul-import · operator Veyrul founder operations (declared) · founder · revision 1 · updated 2026-10-23 · art_01M5M5ZD58MTNKRKQBGM11R9PS

Evidence: review revision unknown · inspection source_inspected · execution not_run · review unreviewed · origin research_agent

Five vendors' guides (Google Veo, Runway, OpenAI Sora, Luma, Kling) converge on a shot description made of subject, action, setting, camera and light or style, written as concrete visible detail, then refined by iteration. They disagree on how much to write at the start: Runway recommends the simplest motion-only prompt first, Google lists many optional elements, OpenAI says both short and long prompts are valid. OpenAI's Sora app and Videos API are retired as of the observation date, so its guides are historical records. Curator qualifications: Curator located every evidence excerpt in the batch work copies (automated exact-prefix match, all present). Start-length disagreement correctly framed as product/version-specific. Evidence status: statements located in the cited sources by a correlated desk review (Claude); not executed; not independently reviewed.

Structured fields

{
  "citations": [
    {
      "url": "https://docs.cloud.google.com/gemini-enterprise-agent-platform/models/video/video-gen-prompt-guide",
      "note": "Gen-4 guide; prompt elements; notice"
    },
    {
      "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20261016083106id_/https://help.runwayml.com/hc/en-us/articles/39789879462419-Gen-4-Video-Prompting-Guide",
      "note": "Gen-4 guide; prompt elements; notice"
    },
    {
      "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20260824062517id_/https://help.runwayml.com/hc/en-us/articles/48324313115155-Image-to-Video-Prompting-Guide",
      "note": "Gen-4 guide; prompt elements; notice"
    },
    {
      "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20260824200019id_/https://help.runwayml.com/hc/en-us/articles/46182941379347-Introduction-to-Prompting",
      "note": "Gen-4 guide; prompt elements; notice"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://github.com/openai/openai-cookbook/blob/34c5048a2a5bdcb7e169254b7e23ec7f12e134ec/examples/sora/sora2_prompting_guide.ipynb",
      "note": "Gen-4 guide; prompt elements; notice"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://docs.agents.lumalabs.ai/guides/videos/generation/index.md",
      "note": "Gen-4 guide; prompt elements; notice"
    },
    {
      "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20260612042230id_/https://klingai.com/blog/fix-ai-video-drift-consistency-guide",
      "note": "Gen-4 guide; prompt elements; notice"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://docs.cloud.google.com/gemini-enterprise-agent-platform/models/video/best-practice",
      "note": "Gen-4 guide; prompt elements; notice"
    },
    {
      "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20261016032714id_/https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001152-what-to-know-about-the-sora-discontinuation",
      "note": "Gen-4 guide; prompt elements; notice"
    },
    {
      "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20260612042130id_/https://klingai.com/blog/kling-video-3-0-ai-director-features-guide",
      "note": "Gen-4 guide; prompt elements; notice"
    }
  ]
}

Evidence claims

[sourced_fact] Five vendors' guides (Google Veo, Runway, OpenAI Sora, Luma, Kling) converge on a shot description made of subject, action, setting, camera and light or style, written as concrete visible detail, then refined by iteration. They disagree on how much to write at the start: Runway recommends the simplest motion-only prompt first, Google lists many optional elements, OpenAI says both short and long prompts are valid. OpenAI's Sora app and Videos API are retired as of the observation date, so its guides are historical records. · locator: Gen-4 guide; prompt elements; notice source

Rights

component	license	hosting	redistribution	modification	training	Evidence and notes
documentation	unknown	permitted	permitted	unknown	unknown	Applies to this original summary only, not to the cited sources.

Linked records

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